Graffiti
by Rhelle
Summary: [Kato introspective] We died with regrets. All of us. We all wish we’d done that thing we’d always wanted to do, said those words we’d always wanted to say. All that any of us wants is to be remembered for something, even if it’s only graffiti.


Summary: Kato introspective We died with regrets. All of us. We all wish we'd done that thing we'd always wanted to do, said those words we'd always wanted to say. All that any of us wants is to be remembered for something, even if it's only graffiti.

Author's Note: I actually wrote this a long time ago, as a piece of original fiction. But somewhere in the process of writing, I realized, OMFGBBQ, this sounds like Kato! Kato is one of my most favoritest AS characters, so I was very pleased, and decided to make a few changes to the story and post a version of it as a fanfic.

I made most of these changes while sipping some truly excellent Mexican booze, so I hope this gave the fic a particular Kato flavor :wink wink:

Graffiti

When I was young, I used to wonder why the dead were always so silent. Now that I've died and am one of them, I think I know. We, all the dead, are in mourning for ourselves.

We died with regrets. All of us. We all wish we'd done that thing we'd always wanted to do, said those words we'd always wanted to say. You see, all that any of us wants is to be remembered. We want to leave something behind, even if it's only graffiti.

There isn't much here in the world beyond death but memories of life and lightness. And because I can do nothing else, I remember, remember that winter when I was sixteen and still alive, and I'm not quite drunk yet but I'm getting there….

888

"Everything's graffiti," he says, like it's some kind of revelation, some Kabalistic sentence that will bring us to salvation, and leans back in his chair looking very pleased with himself.

We're at some crappy club whose name I can't even remember, the kind of place where they let you drink no matter what age you are. Angry, dissatisfied young men are up onstage playing the songs of other angry, dissatisfied young men; everyone else is yelling and jumping around, and generally acting like ferrets on crack. The air is thick with the smoke of illicit substances, and the colored flashing lights twirl like pinwheels in an acid-popper's fantasies. Then there's him and me, just sitting here and watching it all.

He's a cute little "_artiste_" jacked up on cocaine and philosophy courses, dressed in his Bauhaus black, trying to look wild and untamed but just coming off as a cross between Jesus and Charles Manson. I of course, am Kato Yue - enough said. Tantamount to the lion lying down with the lamb, us sitting here, but even so it's not the work of some greater force, just the bottle of scotch on the table. If not for that, we'd probably still be enthusiastically snubbing each other.

But there it is, and here we are, half-smashed and starting to contemplate the meaning of life.

Well, he's doing most of the contemplating; I'm just nursing my scotch and trying to follow along. But this - this graffiti thing - interests me. I put down the booze, and gaze at him with my chin propped on my fist.

"Do you know why people write or paint or make music? Because they want others to feel what they feel and to know what they know, but above all because they want to be _remembered_." He bangs the table, making the glasses shiver. "A book or a painting is almost eternal. What was Monet thinking when he painted his Water Lilies? That he wanted to immortalize these flowers, but he also wanted to immortalize himself.

"Everyone that's born into this world wants to leave it a different place. But it is as it always was, a mix of good and evil. What can we do to tip the balance? Everything that's done has been done before, everything that's learned is forgotten. All art, in the final analysis, is useless, nothing more than graffiti. We will die, and everyone will forget we ever lived."

Well, that's a cheery thought. I feel like I've been struck between the eyes with a two-by-four. I blink. I try to speak but can't, want to turn away but do not dare. I just look at him, this stupid sonofabitch with an expression on his face like a dog that's done a trick and expects a treat. And I'm afraid that he is right.

There are different eras in our lives, like a series of valleys - childhood, youth, adulthood, old age - and in these we cannot see forward or back, only plod slowly onward with time. But in this moment, my future is laid out before me like a vision. And my future is death.

Death above me, death before me, death to my right and my left; death within me. Death all around me. It is only a matter of time. It is only ever a matter of time.

This is weird, because I've never worried about death before, never placed much value on my life. I was always the one who'd be hanging out the window of a car going ninety down the freeway, party wherever and whenever I could. But then again, I was very young, and nothing young ever thinks it's going to die. I hadn't seen enough of life to know it would end. I'd put the gun to my head and the poison to my lips, but I never really thought I would die.

"No," I say dumbly. "No." I'm up, and backing away from him, this messenger of my own fear. Then I'm out the door and free.

After the hot, smoky interior of the club, the sudden cold is painful, a slap to the face. But pain lets you know you're alive.

I throw my head back and beyond the city lights I can see the sky, cloud patterns racing across the darkness. And I think, _That's what we are. Fleeting, pretty shapes that pass below the horizon and are forgotten. But some are remembered for a little while after they're gone, and everyone wants to be one of these, because we know that in fame is a kind of immortality. I will be one of these, I know I will. I have to be._

I shiver, not wholly from the cold, and look around at this dingy alley. Graffiti covers the walls on both sides of me, a mass of curses, names, those kinds of things. I look at this, and I think that all the fine paintings and poems in all the world do not contain such defiance against the silence and the dark.

Now, I'm not the kind of guy who likes art very much; it's all too smart for me. But this is art of a different kind, spraypaint letters rendered kaleidoscopic and strangely beautiful. This is art I can empathize with.

If everything is graffiti, does that mean graffiti is everything?

I don't know whether it's the scotch, the cold, or just my own desperation, but I take the spray can out of my bag and on another dirty wall in another dirty city, I scrawl a variation of the classic that's been scrawled on a thousand walls since the beginning of time:

_KATO WAS HERE_.

This is something, maybe it is enough. Maybe when I'm gone, this will remain; maybe others will see it and they'll think about the one who made it. And I'll live on, in the minds of those as pathetic as I was. Maybe.

Well, Monet had his Water Lilies, and I have this. Even if it's only an illusion, it's a comforting one. I stagger off into the night, thinking, _Oh my God, I need a drink_.

888

I died young; I was murdered. I'm sure you've heard the story; poor crazy Kato, who took a bad pill one day, tried to kill the Messiah, and instead was killed himself. Not that anyone cared. I was just another light missing; another death in a world whose past, present, and future is death. Ho hum.

I was seventeen, not even old enough to buy a fuckin' pack of cigarettes, and I died. I wanted my life to be more than a wasteland; I wanted my death to be more than a statistic. I failed at both.

No one visits my grave, even when the police found my body. At this point, my parents were resolutely trying to pretend I wasn't theirs (which in a way I wasn't), and my friends - or what passed for friends - all so stupid off drugs that they probably forgot me by their next hit. But as far as I know, my name remains scrawled on that alley wall.

It's the living who forget; the dead remember everything. I still maintain I would have changed the world if I hadn't died first.

Nothing that lives ever really wants to die, I think. Everything fears death, whether they know it or not. We instinctively fear the unknown, and death is the final and greatest unknown.

My last words were, "_I don't want to die_." I, who always hated life.

It isn't like this is some kind of revelation; death doesn't teach you anything about life except that it ends. But I do know that nothing is without meaning; that we do not truly live until we realize we can die; that we want and want and want, and do not know all we have.

Yet even here, we are only damned by our own choice. Even here, we are not beyond hope of being free.

There is a great light coming. Even with eyes long rotted, I can see it. The Messiah is for the dead as well as the living, and it is true that the one who damns you can also set you free.

I will save him, in hopes that I will also save myself.

**__**

FINIS

Review. Kato wants you to. :pokes Kato:

Kato: Go away, you freak.


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